Mahoney converting to gas

SOUTH PORTLAND — The South Portland City Council has hired Northeast Mechanical of Portland to convert the two boilers at Mahoney Middle School from No. 2 fuel oil to natural gas, for $126,910. The conversion makes the bus garage on Wescott Road the only school department building to still use heating oil.

The contract was not put out to bid, said City Manager Jim Gailey, because Northeast is the only company in the state certified to work on the Cleaver-Brooks brand boilers at the school, which date to 1989 and 2002, respectively.

The contract includes installation of the conversion equipment for $83,043 and a new chimney lining for $43,867. According to Russ Brigham, the school department’s director of buildings and grounds, the changeover should pay for itself in lower fuel and maintenance costs within “5.7 years.”

Mahoney, built in 1924 and expanded in 1936, was originally heated with coal. The 10,000-gallon oil tank is in what was once the coal room and dates to the mid-1950s.

“It was never registered and has never been inspected until this past fall,” wrote Brigham, in a memo to the City Council. “We now know there are several repairs required.”

City Manager Jim Gailey said that fix has been pegged at $20,000. Moreover, because the tank was sealed into the coal room with concrete blocks, creating a tight area with only one exit in what Gailey calls an “inhospitable environment” with “no safety containment,” the fire department has declared the it a “permit required confined space.”

That, said Gailey, means if the city had chosen to fix the tank instead of converting the boilers to natural gas, additional costs would have been incurred by a mandate that emergency personnel be present on stand-by throughout the process.

The cost to “dismember and remove” the oil tank has been estimated at $12,000.

“I’m going to send that order right away,” said Brigham. “I want to get it out of there and the system converted ASAP to be ready for next season.”